Who owns the house that Jack built, was the question posed by Paul Weller protégé Tracie on her Respond Records 80s hit. The answer, it turned out, was we owned the house that Jack built and now you can own the Lars Von Trier's House That Jack Built. And yes, I know that was a torturous opening but I've had that damn tune in my head ever since the disc for this arrived and torturous openings are the order of the day in LVT's grisly American set serial killer epic, which manages to be somehow jeering, contemptuous and yet meek, even defeated. It is some kind of career culmination for the Danish provocateur: he's finally scraped the bottom of his barrel. A disappointment if you are an admirer, though I guess Lars may derive some satisfaction from finally making it there after all those decades of trying.

Serial killers; yeah I used to have an interest. Enough to know that the red van Jack cruises around in and his fake crutches are references to Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer, though not to know which is which. One of my favourite books is Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho, a brilliant satire and our first introduction to a load of themes and ideas about the psychopathy of capitalism and the soul-crushing effects of materialism that have been done to death subsequently. It is a graphic in places but whenever I read it I am very careful to make sure that whenever it got down to describing some act of sadistic violence I would just jump to the next chapter or section. Which was my strategy for getting through this, even though possibly it isn't quite as graphic as the build-up suggests; but I wouldn't really know for sure because I try to be picky about what goes in my eyes and ears.

The 70s and 80s were probably the peak era for people being “into” serial killers, for believing their actions had some special insight or significance. The arrests of Peter Sutcliffe and Dennis Nilsen impacted British society in a way that only a terrorist can now. Back then the culture's embrace of black humour was relatively sparing, so it still carried some meaning. The Belgium film Man Bites Dog, about a documentary crew that follows around a serial killer, was both genuinely hilarious and truly shocking. Fortunately, Hannibal Lector came along to show us that the idea of the genius serial killer, the killer whose murders are artistic statements, was so much hooey. We took a bit of time for the lesson to sink in (let's give due gratitude to Ridley Scott's Hannibal, the best of the Lector films because it exposed the character as so much hot air, just another tired Sherlock Holmes knock off.) The serial killer is now a neutered and slightly pathetic figure in popular culture, as lazy and desperate as The Cop On The Edge.

In the Dad's Army of European arthouse cinema grandees, Lars Von Trier is definitely the Private Pike, but even he's not stupid boy enough to buy into the serial killer mystique. His film is about how its protagonist, serial killing engineer Jack (Dillon), is dull and useless. Having done Sex with Nymphomaniac, he tackles Violence in much the same way. In Nympho Gainsbourg was the force of nihilism that Stellan Skarsgard tries to redeem with art, culture, ethics and fishing. Here Jack is recounting five incidents from his killing career to an unseen figure named Verge (Ganz.) But the roles are reversed. The transgressor Jack is trying to make the case that his murders are works of art, adhere to the principles of great art and that mankind's greatest icons have been its monsters. Verge wearily indulges his justifications but then dismisses them, telling him not to delude himself that he (Jack) is telling him (Verge) anything that he hasn't heard before.

The first thing to say about THTJB is that it really is terrible, though if you stick with it there is an epilogue that offers a parting flourish that means your time hasn't been entirely wasted. (This epilogue may though make the film that bit more hateful, but more of that in the Spoilers section.) The central problem is Jack himself. The treatise seems to be that serial killers are actually quite sad and dull individuals, and Jack is so dull he starts trying our patience within about ten minutes. There really is nothing to him.

The thing that movies always get wrong about serial killers, (and Man Bites Dog is particularly guilty of this) is ignoring that they are predominantly creatures of habit, people who have their own, very particular way of doing things. Once they have established their routine they might try to refine it but what they won't do is make it up on the spot. We are told Jack has OCD, a cleanliness compulsion, but he's a be-bop serial killer, an improviser, a slay-it-as-its-lays monster who comes up with new riffs on the hoof.

Dillon is poor in the title role but then he hasn't got a character to play, just a series of set pieces and provocation that Von Trier and his lady friend and co-scriptwriter Jennie Hallund have dreamt up for him. The film abounds with comic notions. Jack has OCD, a cleaning compulsion that means that he has to keep returning to a crime scene to check everything is clean. That's a nice idea but the sequence isn't as funny as it should be and the OCD gets quickly dropped afterwards.

God knows I hated LVT's Antichrist, but at least it generated some emotion in me. The dreary execution drains any humour from this. It's all so, so lazy. I doubt he even applied half his heart to it and the lack of energy is infectious.

Spoilers: the film's only redeeming feature is its coda where Verge is revealed, to nobody's great surprise to be Virgil taking Jack to the other side. While most of the film is rendered in drab hand-held camera and abrasive jump cuts, here Von Trier employs some of prettiest ever imagery for his vision of Dante. But isn't it a betrayal of the film's theme? The film has tried to tell us that Jack is a dull nobody with a messiah delusion/ god complex and then when he dies he is rewarded with Virgil himself turning up to hear his confession and take him to his allotted place in the afterlife, a prominent spot in Hell. It's eternal damnation, it is going to hurt, but Jack must be chuffed to find that divinity values him as something special and exceptional.

Extras.

A trailer.A short introduction by LVT which is actually his announcement in 2016 that Jack would be his next feature.A featurette which is a mixture of interviews and panels with LVT, Dillon and Thurman.A long Danish language interview with LVT.

What I took from these is that he remains incredibly hung up over his banning from Cannes for his flippant "I am a Nazi" remark. It's odd that such a rebel, such a bad boy, should sulk about not being allowed to go to the safe and cosy get together and compete for its meaningless baubles.